Chapter 81: Dimensional Projection
Life at Kamar-Taj moved slowly. The kind of slow where the sun stretched across the stone courtyard like it had nowhere else to be, and the scent of burning incense drifted past open windows with no urgency. Since most of the magic studied here didn't include life extension, students came and went in waves, and only a few ever stayed long. Right now, fewer than two hundred remained. Some were sent off to guard sanctums across the world, and others eventually grew tired of the cloistered mountain life and returned to society.
George found he didn't mind the quiet. He liked it. Every morning started the same: a cup of warm tea, a cool breeze, and a pile of books borrowed from the library. He read on the same balcony every day, overlooking a slope of mossy stone and prayer flags snapping in the wind. It wasn't a bad life.
He had already read everything they'd let him borrow, but that didn't mean he had mastered it all. So he read again, sometimes finding things he'd missed the first time through.
Today, he had a book open on Vishanti magic. One of the thicker ones. It explained how Kamar-Taj mystics borrowed power from other realms, usually from the Vishanti—a trinity of old gods known for their reliability and fairness. But others drew from darker places. Dimensions that took more than they gave. Borrowing from those usually meant trouble.
The mystics here were more like clever borrowers than actual wielders of magic. They drew power, cast spells, and then repaid that magic later through meditation and effort. Some spells sounded grand, like the Bolts of Balthakk or the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, but in truth, they were rented power—something George didn't plan on relying on forever.
He kept going back to one question: if others could borrow power, could he be the source?
After weeks of experimenting with rune logic and spell structures, George thought he had a workaround. He replaced the part of the spell that normally connected to the Vishanti with a rune that pointed to himself. A shortcut. Risky, maybe, but worth trying.
Three months into his stay at Kamar-Taj, he took fifty shadow clones to a quiet valley and started testing different rune combinations. One clone worked a spell slowly, golden sparks curling from his fingers. A ring began to form, then grow, and finally stabilize into a glowing circular portal.
On the other side, George could see the study room back at Hogwarts Island.
His main body noticed right away and dismissed the other clones. All their feedback flooded into his mind at once—how the runes flowed, how the portal held—and after absorbing it all, George tried it himself. His portal opened clean, steady, and without needing a sling ring.
Back at the Kamar-Taj square, mystics who were mid-practice paused when George stepped through his portal. A few blinked. One guy dropped his sling ring.
Then came the murmurs.
"You see that?"
"He didn't even use—"
"Was that George?"
And then the congratulations started. A couple of mystics stepped forward, nodding in appreciation.
"Congratulations, Mystic George."
George gave a small nod, not used to attention. Just then, a familiar voice cut through the background.
"Thank you, Sorcerer Ancient One," he said, turning to greet her.
The others bowed quickly. "Sorcerer Ancient One."
She returned their greetings with a calm smile. Her robes barely moved in the breeze, and the look in her eyes was hard to read—amused, maybe, or just thoughtful.
With a simple gesture, she motioned for George to follow, and they headed toward the tea room. It was the same room as months ago. Quiet, shaded, full of the faint scent of herbs and wood polish. She didn't say anything at first. Just brewed the tea herself, poured it for both of them, and waited for the silence to settle.
"I didn't teach you anything," she said eventually, almost like she was stating a fact, not trying to be humble. "Everything you've done came from your own hands."
George shook his head lightly. "Without your permission, I wouldn't have gotten near those books. And the library helped more than you think."
She gave a small smile and tilted her head. "Knowledge isn't a locked box. Kamar-Taj exists for people who respect magic. You've done that."
They drank in silence for a while longer. The tea was hot, smooth. Nothing flashy.
"You've got a gift," she said after a bit. "It's rare to see someone open a portal without a sling ring."
"Sorcerer Ancient One," George said, "can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Are mystics always just… borrowers? Never the source?"
She looked down at her cup, then back at him.
"You've read about the older ones. Dimensional entities, ancient mystics who gave up their bodies to become part of the space between spaces. Most dimensions now are claimed to or dangerous. Safe ones are few and far between. You've seen that."
George noticed her tone shift—not sadness exactly, but something close to it. Maybe regret. He didn't press.
Instead, he moved the conversation toward spell mechanics. He had questions about runes, about how dimension-locking interacted with mirror-layer geometry, and the Ancient One listened carefully, sometimes correcting his theory, sometimes just nodding and letting him talk it out.
They stayed like that for over an hour, going back and forth.
Before leaving, George reached into the space he'd carried on his person and pulled out a small stack of booklets—notes he'd written and spells he'd modified.
"I put a few things together," he said, placing them on the table. "Some minor spells, nothing serious. Handy for mending broken dishes or heating tea. It might be useful for daily stuff. If any of the younger mystics want to mess around with them, feel free."
The Ancient One touched the booklets gently, skimming a few lines.
"You're generous with what you've learned," she said. "Thank you. You're welcome to exchange magic with us anytime."
George smiled and nodded. "I'll be back to bother Kamar-Taj again."
Before heading out, he summoned a wooden box and slid it across the table. "These are some teas I've been holding onto. Grew them myself. Not enchanted or anything. Just good leaves. Thought you might like a few."
"I'll try them," she said. "Thank you."
They talked a little longer, nothing too deep, and then George stood, offered a quick bow, and opened another portal—this time not just clean, but effortless like folding a piece of paper.
He stepped into his study back at Hogwarts. The light was golden, late afternoon. A warm breeze moved through the open windows. The clone he'd left behind vanished as soon as he returned. George sat down on the balcony, poured himself a new cup of tea, and let his thoughts drift.
He had some new ideas to test, but no rush. First, he'd rewrite the spells he brought back from Kamar-Taj—tweak them so they worked off his energy. Best to do it properly. No point opening a door if you didn't know what was on the other side.
___________________________________________________________________________
Spin-Off: The Swent Volume
2,400 words |
I got the book from a guy named Malik.
Just a dude in New York with that name, who swore his cousin picked it up off a crate of old tomes Kamar-Taj was clearing out in Kathmandu. It was already beat to hell when I saw it—leather cover warped, half the corners chewed, and a page stuck together with what might've been butter chicken.
The title wasn't embossed. It was handwritten on the spine in dry, faded ink:
"The Swent Volume: Practical Arcana for the Everyday"
I was already one year out of Kamar-Taj by then, doing dumb tech support for an insurance group in Queens and healing my back with posture spells in the office bathroom. Nobody likes to talk about how magic becomes boring when rent's due. How can you shape fire with your hands and still have to deal with a broken fridge? How you can travel between dimensions and still have a LinkedIn profile.
But that book changed things.
George Orwell Swent. Nobody called him that in public, not in the book anyway. But if you were at Kamar-Taj for long enough, the name floated around—usually said low, between tea and complaints about sling ring burns.
He was "the one who never borrowed."
The "King of Self-Sustained Magic."
The "guy who made a spell to measure perfectly cooked rice."
And it wasn't a myth. The spells in that book worked.
The first time I tested one, I wasn't trying to. My roommate's girlfriend left an "accidental" pregnancy test in our bathroom, and naturally, he spiraled. I didn't have time for his meltdown—we had an inspection at work and my manager was convinced I was "shapeshifting between tasks too quickly."
I flipped through the Swent book looking for a breath-freshening rune and landed on a folded page.
"Diagnostic Loop for Internal Homeostasis."
Subtitled: Faster than bloodwork. Decent for pregnancy, STDs, allergies, and minor liver failures.
I chalked the rune on a coffee filter with a marker, had my roommate breathe through it, muttered the incantation half-assed... and the paper turned solid green with no shimmer.
Negative.
He cried. I got the kitchen back.
We never told her.
Two weeks later, I was using a modified version of the rune to test milk expiration without smelling it.
Then I started keeping the book in my bag.
Then I bought a new bag, just to fit it better.
The thing is, magic for "big stuff" — mirror dimensions, spatial gates, time-slowing fields — all of that makes you feel powerful. But George's spells made you live better.
There were notes in the margins like:
"Add lemon juice here if casting on shellfish."
"This version gives your voice a radio DJ timbre. Be careful if you're near a karaoke machine."
"Avoid during exams. Temporarily improves intuition but may make you feel like you've already passed."
I think that's what got me.
It wasn't flashy. It was personal. It was someone who lived with magic, not someone who posed with it.
That kind of person? You want to know more about them.
That's how the trouble started.
I was dumb enough to start sharing the spells.
We had a little group — me, my ex-flatmate Risha, and this tall guy named Theo who used to spar with the monks and now ran a used bookstore in Flatbush. They were both magic-adjacent. Not full Kamar-Taj initiates, but they'd seen some things.
Risha used a Swent spell to clean her cast-iron skillet and accidentally removed the iron too.
Theo tried "Rain Shield No. 3" to protect his rare books from damp air and nearly turned the building's basement into a terrarium.
Me? I used a spell to perfectly reheat noodles.
Two microwaves blew up before I learned to cast it after closing the door.
But we kept reading. Kept testing. Kept laughing.
Then came The Garden Incident.
We were in Staten Island for Risha's cousin's wedding, staying at her family's place. Big suburban house, nosy aunts, a backyard with tomato planters, and a grill that hadn't worked since 2007.
At midnight, buzzed on too many mango sodas and minor success, we decided to try George's "Night Bloom" charm — a spell meant to force open shy flora for lunar aesthetic joy.
The tomatoes exploded.
Literally exploded.
Green juice everywhere. Her uncle thought it was sabotage.
The backyard smelled like bruschetta for two days.
But the kicker? When her aunt came out the next morning — after swearing all week that magic was a hoax — she found a glowing cherry blossom tree that hadn't been there the night before.
We told her it was a delivery gift.
She cried. Then she started gardening again.
Sometimes George's magic fixed more than tomatoes.
The weirdest thing about the Swent Volume?
The final pages.
He didn't write them like spells.
He wrote them like diary entries. Not sappy ones, either. Just a few thoughts. Observations. Ideas. Like these:
"Why doesn't anyone enchant shoelaces to never untie?"
"Muggles don't know it, but they're better at seeing magic than most of us."
"I saw a whale made of starlight in the South Pacific. No spell needed. Just clear sky and patience."
"I'm not building an empire. I'm building options. So the next boy who's too strange, too smart, too far ahead — has more than one way to survive."
That one stuck with me for days.
There's this idea floating around among the newer students.
That George isn't dead.
That he's somewhere out there — hiding in plain sight.
He'd be a hundred-plus now, but who says he ages like us?
He's probably sipping soup in some oceanview village in Portugal, growing invisible herbs and listening to records, still scribbling down dumb, useful spells no one's ever thought to cast.
But even if he's not?
He left behind enough.
One time, I went to see this guy who runs a clinic downtown. Real low-key magical healer. Name's Jensen or something like that. He's been off the radar for years, but I'd heard he could brew a charm to fix neural fatigue — something I definitely had from overusing minor portals just to avoid bad traffic.
I walked in, sat down, and before I could explain, he went,
"You're a Swent reader, huh?"
I blinked.
He pulled out a thick, hand-copied replica of the Volume.
His version had tabs, color-coded spells, and tiny illustrations.
"You ever try the 'reverse clumsy charm'?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"It makes you do one graceful thing per day. Never more, never less."
We laughed for five minutes.
He gave me the fatigue charm for free.
One day, I'll pass my copy on too.
Maybe to someone who's just been kicked out of formal training, or someone who thinks magic only counts when it's explosive. Maybe to someone who burned out and needs to fall in love with it again.
And I'll say:
"Here. This is Swent's book. He didn't write it for war or glory or fame. He wrote it because life is dumb and messy, and you need help sometimes. And magic, if it's real, should make that part better."
A week ago, someone left a note in my mailbox.
Folded clean, no name.
Inside was a photo, grainy and a little tilted. Showed a man sitting at an outdoor café, mid-laugh, holding a mug of something that looked like jasmine tea. He was in his 30s, maybe. Clear-eyed. Sharp. Looked like someone who didn't mind being unknown.
Below it, just one line, written in neat, deliberate pen:
"He still remembers every spell."
I stared at that for a long time.
Then I opened the Swent Volume, turned to a fresh page, and started writing down a spell for never losing socks in the laundry.
Because that's what he would've done.
End.